Striking their scaly flanks was like hammering iron with his bare fists. Iscari was laboring to catch his breath under the rapid pace of combat. His rage stoked further upon noticing that these creatures were doing little more than toying with him. Playing with their food. They might not be able to slay him, but they found no end to the enjoyment of tossing him back and forth like a ball.

Even when he launched himself from the ground to hammer their heads into the ceiling, fist to jaw, they'd just laugh. Kicking them sideways and tearing them from the ground, slamming them down with all his might. None of it bore any effect.

Why am I so weak...? If he'd said this aloud, the women might have taken offense. 'Weak' was an odd word for someone who was punching carriage sized holes in the stone and flattening the serpentine heads with his overhanded strikes. In the hands of Iscari, the primus of hope, no weapon could survive. They would crumble at a blow, with the strength he possessed, so he never carried one.

Now, he regretted it. For some unknown reason, less known to the women, he was incapable of summoning his full might. The prince of Varia could feel it in his bones, a frailness to his strikes that had not existed hours before. Beyond that, were the bleeding wounds on his face and body. He'd never bled in his life, even when sparring with his father.

Only two options presented themselves. These lindwurm's were much stronger than the adventurers association ranked them, or he was weaker than normal. Iscari leaned toward the latter.

Is it because I'm tired? He doubted it, he only slept because it was something to do. Because he liked the sweet embrace of dreams where he was a free man and not bound to duty. If he was to force himself, he could remain conscious for months at a time with no ill effect. When he wasn't busy, he'd sleep, it was less boring that way.

“We need water magic to...” Iscari blocked the latest swipe with a counter of his fist, sending the claw bouncing backwards with a loud crack. “Water magic to break their infusion!”

Alex clucked her tongue, turning to Sigi. Lindwurm's were creatures of the earth, capable of infusion magic, utilizing the elements to become one with them. Bolstering their bodies, minds, reflexes, everything. Here in the earth, among so much of their native element, they were incredibly strong. Any bone that was broken would heal near instantly, and their skin was harder than any human forged steel.

Sigi was the first to act. Reflecting on the pathetic state of herself at the bridge and refusing to allow that to become her standard. Stepping forward, she erupted into a series of rapid hand motions and seemingly random chants.

...A level three personal spell! If Alex hadn't been so busy casting her own, she'd have had the time to observe how impressive that was. There was a thing about the spells you'd find in a book available to the public and academy students alike. They were clunky and inefficient, sometimes purposely so. Everyone's ability to wield mana was slightly different, to an imperceptible degree, thus powerful mages of great knowledge would labor for weeks or months to fine tune their spells and develop new ones. It wasn't something an 'uneducated' student in their first year at the academy should be able to do.

A jetting spray of water lashed out, slamming into scaled flanks with the force of a tidal wave.

It was all for naught though. Sigi spat, shaken from her feet by the chortling lindwurm to the rear who had seen exactly what she was doing. Left wondering why these humans put so much effort into a spell casting that forced itself on the elements rather than living in tune with them, like the various creatures of the world did.

Overly complex and flashy, there was finesse in it to allow these lesser creatures to grasp at powers above their station, but that was all. A spell could take four or five seconds to manifest, and in a situation like this – that was more than enough time to kill. It wasn't a moment later that Sigi was tossed aside by a pillar of earth, striking at her uniform and sending her flying with a dull crack. Barely enough protection to aid her in surviving the blow, if only because these monsters wanted their meals warm when they had finished playing with them.

Regardless, her situation was critical. Unused to the spell, she'd been too slow, leaving Alex's much faster level two spell to do the work. A swirling eddy of dark water manifested in her hands, chasing the thread towards the darkness and flying forward in a torrent of black liquid. It sprayed haphazardly through the cavern, scalding Iscari and the lindwurm before him alike. In her panic, only one of them was harmed – with the serpent's scales whisking most of the moisture away before answering with its own spell.

A fist sized rock struck Alex clean in the face, shattering her nose. Enough force to pulp the cartilage, but not enough to render her unconscious. Leaving her to deal with the agonizing pain and blood filling her mouth faster than she could spit it out.

We're going to die here... Iscari realized that they were lost. He didn't possess the power to defeat these creatures, and already half their number had been cast aside effortlessly. Even Okami lay half broken and whimpering on the ground, no match for these kin of the mythical dragons. No, they are...

Just as the maw of the nearest wyrm opened to engulf him, it paused. It's pupils dilated and it began to writhe in pain. Writhing at its trunk of a body and howling in discomfort.

“It's working!” Iscari cried. Left bleeding from a score of wounds and staring at the thrashing wyrm currently struggling to resist Alex's spell. It hadn't seemed like anything impressive, but the effects were anything but.

–

It was dark again. Dark, but not the kind of dark one would see in the night. Everything was pitch black and moist. One moment, he'd been standing there, when the wards had fallen. He could feel the mana built up in the place released from its bonds, fleeing back into the sky where it belonged, no longer shackled beneath the earth. With Orpheus freed, her prison had no purpose, and the wards had unraveled instantly.

In that moment, before he was torn apart by the wild chain of shattered energy, something had taken hold of him. Plucking him from his position and dragging him off to parts unknown. Wherever he was now, it was cloying and tight, leaving him waist deep in some unknown liquid. A room of soft, sticky walls and total darkness. A beating, like that of a drum, came from all around him.

Tyr could hear echoes of something beyond the wall, pushing at it to escape the claustrophobic confines of the strange place. The walls flexed and moved as he pressed at them, but they were pliable and elastic, always bouncing back. He crawled for a while before seeing the first sign of light in the place, a dull glow at the other end of what was revealed to be a pink tunnel.

That same light gave him the clarity to notice where he was. Or rather, what he was inside of.

It actually happened... Tyr was near the point of laughing aloud, should his fleshy prison have the air required to do so. There were bones and half dissolved skulls everywhere. Rocks and femurs and bits of chunky matter. His greatest fear since his incredible ability to heal from any physical injury had been realized. His skin burned and peeled away, the acidic nature of the liquid he was wading through doing its jog.

Losing no time, he clutched at the sphere of multicolored energies, finding it stuck fast in the fleshy tomb. His sword became a curved dagger, too long to use in the tight squeeze. Some fleshy pocket had enveloped the glowing objects. Like a secondary organ designed to hold them in place, he cut it free with a sawing motion, fears confirmed again as he was forced to dive into what was clearly a vat of digestive liquid.

Acidic, blinding him while his body focused on returning his sight. Like the Milanese 'moving picture' that would flash images rapidly from a projector. On and off his sight went, until he pulled it free and focused on escaping the place he found himself in. Sawing at the elastic material and tasting the vile blood that began to spray into his face.

His breathing grew labored. Not confident in his ability to survive something like suffocation, he fell into a frenzy of hacking and slashing. Pulling at the revealed flaps in a panic. He was desperate to be free of his prison. It was one of, if not the, most terrifying thing that had ever happened to him – forgetting both the humor and the irony of where he'd been sent.

As one might imagine, he was indeed deep in the bowels of a creature. Outside said creature, it's mate ran to its side, calling out to it with the worldsong. Receiving no answer beyond a mewling and the clawing of scales to rid itself of the pain lashing at its softer insides. Beyond them, Astrid was frantically attempting to heal Sigi with what little she knew of light magic.

She tried her best, but Sigi was in a critical state. Her ribs were pulverized and all Astrid could do personally was keep her from slipping nearer the black. Life support without fixing the underlying issue.

Iscari was in a daze, watching the wyrm thrash with enough force to shattered sheets from the stone comprising wall, floor, and ceiling. Until finally, it's stomach began to bulge and a hand holding a crude silver dagger shot through the protrusion. A fel thing, an undead creature with glowing, baleful scarlet eyes. Arms half dissolved, revealing some of the bone, covered in dark armor eaten away and rusted.

A lindwurm was one thing, but this... There was a horror in that which made a mockery of humanity. Undead. Nothing natural about it, it wheezed and hissed before arching its back and screeching triumphantly into the twilight of the cave, holding its dagger aloft in victory as the creature below its boots stopped writhing and lay still. It's mate, the other wyrm struggled to rise it, mournfully baying the loss.

“Run!” Iscari screamed, backing away from the grim sight of it and hoisting the groaning form of Alex on his shoulder. “Death knight!” He cried again, eyes panicked and bloodshot. The most fel of all the known undead sans the lich and the dullahan. A creature of death, brought to life by powerful regret and a singularity of hatred for all things living. Born again with only one purpose, to kill.

It approached them, ignoring the weeping wyrm behind it, clutching at a pulsing embryo of flesh and light. Stopping in place only a few paces toward them, tilting its head in a familiar way. Like a hound.

“...Iscariiii...” It groaned, a hoarse and raspy noise full of longing and pain. The man addressed felt his knees and stomach grow weak. Now, he could smell the thing, feeling the bile rise in his throat at the ghastly stench. “Iscariiiii....”

It knows my name! Left wondering exactly what man or otherwise he'd wronged to give rise to such an unnatural being, clutching his sides in terror. Horrified at the significance of a sentient undead that had found only him as its apparent target.

“Stay back! I've done nothing to wrong you or yours!” Iscari cried, but his words would be for naught. The wyrm who had lost his lifetime mate turned mourning to wrath, pulling itself free from the ground and leaping toward the fel figure, madness in its eyes and jaws unhinged.

Until... The wyrm suddenly froze. Hung in midair by bonds it could not struggle against. Iscari had never heard of a death knight that had such powerful magic, before he realized that it wasn't it – but rather another figure who had entered the cave with the snap and crackle of spatial magic. A figure joined by three others.

“Hold!” Abaddon snarled, dragging Kael by the arm towards him, interrupting his spell and easily dislocating his arm with the force of it.

“You bastard...” Kael winced, dragging his limp limb back into position and rapidly bringing a potion to his lips. “These monsters--”

“That's enough, professor Kael.” Lernin sighed. Kael, the 'bringer of ash', had always been one predisposed toward violence, especially against 'monsters'. Even still, the headmaster had thought he'd possess the presence of mind better than to begin casting a level five fire spell in the depth of a cave. This wasn't exactly the best of environs to use fire magic... “Students...” He turned toward the others, assessing their condition.

“Headmaster!” Iscari cried, relieved of his horrors by the arrival of four professors. “You saved us!” He was near the point of cackling in relief, before pointing a shaky hand at the undead. “But what about--”

Lernin shut his mouth with an air spell and half heard apology. “I should've known it'd be you lot after the wards were broken. How foolish could you have been to enter this place and lead to the deaths of one of the academy guardians... You have a lot of explaining to do.” He whisked them off with a snap of his fingers, leaving the other three to clean up the mess, noticing that one of the students hadn't been returned to the academy alongside the others. Meaning someone, or something, had interfered with his spell.

Hmm... I'm sure Abaddon has some words for his new 'protege', what with the significance of what they've just done.

Back in the cave, what proceeded was a bizarre conversation of growls and snarls between Abaddon and the wyrm. Kael and Wilhelm worked on restoring the wards. This place should be hidden, but it didn't take them long to notice the signs that someone had been digging at this place to reveal the entrance. As for the rest...

“These wards were broken long ago.” Leda mused. “But why...?”

“An astute question.” Kael's face was grim. The markings along the wall were wreathed with the telltale signs of someone who had hastily attempted to overwrite their wards. Hastily... But not shoddily. These had a masters hand behind them. “Leda, detect magic for me please. I'd like to be safe.”

“Yes professor.” She did as she was asked, mumbling the spell and allowing the light emitted by her fingertips to seep into the cracks in the earth and provide a physical relief of what lay there. “These are...?” Truth be told, she didn't know. They were human runes, but the purpose of the warding circles was yet unclear. With so many in one place it was hard to make out what was what.

“Not just wards.” Kael sighed. “Traps. Nearly eight of them all stacked together, all for killing in different ways. A sudden death array, so to speak.”

These students were lucky that a primus had led them here. “They must've activated when the Varian prince entered the cave. Their kind never cease to surprise me, to think that he could fight and kill a lindwurm while under the strain of so much magic designed to contain him is insane...”

“The boy didn't kill it.” Abaddon refuted, jerking his head toward the student that yet remained in their presence. “It was him.” After finishing their conversation, the body of the fallen wyrm was dragged off into the dark deep of the caverns by its mate. Only after being prodded by a terrifying amount of crimson lightning would the beast relent.

“Was that necessary...” Leda was not amused. “Did they deserve that abuse? They were just defending their home.”

“I didn't do it to torture them.” Abaddon had a complicated look on his face. “They were ensorceled. I freed him of his bondage. Someone came here and...” He didn't finish the statement, unsure if he should. Humans were greedy things, and while he trusted the man and halfling well enough, it was a dark omen. Someone had came here and experimented on these creatures to leave them as a ticking time bomb. Perhaps all part of some larger plan. There had been mana crystals implanted in the female that would've ignited as soon as she'd used her breath, resulting in a massive explosion.

“Ah... That's right.” At this point, Tyr had fallen to his knees, shutting his eyes tight and gritting his teeth against the discomfort of his warped flesh. He hadn't fought in so long that he'd not been given a chance to realize how exhausted he was. With a wave of the hand, he collapsed. All exchange of energy had its cost, and magic was no exception. He'd barely the life force in him to accept the healing let alone remain conscious, giving in to the exhaustion and passing out.

After repairing the wards and sealing the cave once again, Abaddon ensured that the magical beast that followed the boy was healed before sending them back to the academy. Left staring at the stone with a look of melancholy and concern on his face. His creativity wasn't the only thing waning in recent years.